Trolls Insulted My Body. So I Made This Music Video for Them.

It’s Friday night and I’m at home, sitting on the couch watching “The Great British Bake Off” in my jammies. My phone lights up with a notification. Despite everyone I know telling me not to read YouTube comments, I do it anyway because I am a contrarian. I read the following:

“STOP PROMOTING OBESITY YOU WHALES!”

“These women are degenerates and no matter how much they forcibly expose their disgusting bodies to the public the public will never ever think they are beautiful.”

“lol fat whales start training and go to the gym daily if you don’t want to die at your thirties”

What was my crime? I made a music video featuring women of all body types and ages dancing and living their best lives, away from male judgment. I know, I’m the worst. And it seems a lot of people have a problem with me lately. Why? Mainly because even as a woman who is black, thick and in my 30s, who does not neatly fit into mainstream beauty standards, I still have the audacity to make art showing myself and my friends.

In popular culture, fat people are often treated as caricatures, punch lines and subjects for our shock. Women are treated as objects that exist solely to be beautiful. Even the president of the United States felt entitled to comment on the French first lady’s appearance. No wonder trolls (of all genders, not just men) feel like they can give their two cents about my looks.

There’s a thin line between criticism and trolling, but here’s a tip: If you hate my song, I can accept it. But please keep your comments about my appearance to yourself, thanks.

Do trolls know that behind our two-dimensional dancing images are real, breathing people with feelings? If trolls were stripped of their internet cloak of invisibility, would they have the courage to say some of these things to our faces? I doubt it. My latest video, “Hi H8ter,” begins to ask some of these questions.

Everyone ages, people lose and gain weight and there are loads of ways to exist that don’t comply with mainstream beauty standards. It’s O.K. We all deserve to be as visible as we want to be. So, bye h8ters.

Shanthony Exum (@YoEaves), a.k.a. Miss Eaves, is a rapper, designer, illustrator and the creator of the forthcoming album “Feminasty.”